On Kawara Japan, 1932-2014

On Kawara (b. 1932) belonged to a broadly international generation of conceptual artists that began to emerge in the mid-1960s, stripping art of personal emotion, reducing it to nearly pure information or idea and greatly playing down the art object. Along with Lawrence Weiner, Joseph Kosuth, Hanne Darboven and others, Kawara gave special prominence to language. From January 4, 1966, Kawara made a long series of “Date paintings” (the Today series), which consist entirely of the date on which the painting was executed in simple white lettering set against a solid background of red, blue, gray, or black. The date is always documented in the language and grammatical conventions of the country in which the painting is executed. The paintings, executed in Liquitex on canvas, conform to one of eight standard sizes, all horizontal in orientation. Kawara made almost 3,000 of these paintings in 112 different cities until his death in 2014. His body of work serves as an examination of the banality of existence and the passage of time.The exceptions are the three paintings, roughly five by seven feet, executed on July 16, 20, and 21, in 1969 — three days when the world was riveted by the moon landing. Kawara exhibited at several editions of Documenta, Kassel, the Dia Art Foundation, New York, the Venice Biennale, the Kyoto Biennale, and the Tokyo Biennale, among others. Today, his works are in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Kunstmuseum Basel,  Switzerland, and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, among others.